momento mori
by fiore del melo
Summary: Warning!: attempting to date demons dressed as humans will not prevent your inevitable murder. —for Happy; a sugar demise contest story


**momento mori**  
>you, human<p>

**the emperor.**

His name is Tequila and the first time Frey sees him, he's breaking a kid's kneecaps with a smile on his face and cheerful words on his lips like candy butterflies. Frey thinks it's love at first sight and if he were different (softer, weaker, better) he would have gone to help that kid.

But he's not different, he's Frey and his heart is made of concrete.

So he runs after this Tequila.

"Hi," says Frey.

"Hello," says Tequila, smiling bemusedly and Frey thinks it's a nice smile. "Can I help you?"

"Yeah. Want to go out for coffee?"

"No." Tequila then dislocates Frey's jaw and says, "And if you ever come near me again, I'll break every bone in your body, okay? See you around."

**the poison.**

Tequila is like a flesh-eating disease and he's gnawing away at Frey's skin without even trying. Frey is left feeling bloody and raw and sick, especially when he sees Tequila with a pretty, pretty girl and a young man with vicious eyes. Mostly because he recognizes the chick and she might very well shoot him in the face if she sees him (because sometimes stuff like that happens).

Frey has enough common sense to hide and starts bringing in more customers than ever.

When he gets a threatening message written across the wall of his apartment in pink paint and glitter, he has the distinct feeling the Tequila can hold a grudge.

**the queen.**

Vanilla Filastrocca is the scariest little girl he has ever met, especially when she has a Mateba revolver pointed at his face.

"Tiki knows you've been trying to follow him," she says, real slow and steady and perfectly unflappable. Frey hates her already, especially since she's Filastrocca's kid. "But he says he's willing to forgive and forget if you lend us a hand."

Frey is a business man, but he doesn't feel like a very good one when he blurts, "What can I do?"

Vanilla blinks three times, a pass of long painted lashes and glittery eye liner. She lowers the gun but doesn't take her finger off the trigger and Frey knows she could still put a bullet through his femur if she wanted. She tells, "We need money."

Frey knows money and he loves it more than he knows it and even if it's Tequila, he's not going to be parting with his cash that easily. "How much?"

"Enough to buy a place," replies Vanilla, rocking on the heels of her arbok-skin flats. "We're going to open a coffee shop."

Frey grits his teeth and thinks about how much this might cost him: a lot, whether he says no or not. Vanilla watches him with black eyes. "That's not very specific."

She crosses over the floor to the kitchen of his flat and slides into a seat at the table. Frey watches while she picks through the fruit in the bowl. He sits down across from her because Frey knows that's what she wants him to do. She flattens a flyer from her pocket against the wood and slides it to him. It's the front of a building downtown, a place he knows because it's an ideal place for a store. There's a **for lease** sign in the window and an ugly, ugly number on the bottom of the page.

Frey takes in Vanilla's shoes, her designer jeans and fur coat and asks, "Don't you have money, little girl?"

"It's my papa's money, so not mine to spend. Papa doesn't like Tiki enough to lend him anything," she answers with a shrug. Then she leans in real close and whispers, "But I know you like Tiki enough to lend him _anything_."

She sits back and Frey wants to knock her teeth out.

**the devil.**

Tequila closes the violin case and buckles it closed, smiling brilliantly. "Why, thank you, Frey," he says kindly. "What a generous gift! Please, let me take you out for coffee."

Frey can't say no because he can see the flash of semi-automatic hidden in Tequila's boot or maybe that's just his cellphone, but it's kind of dark and Frey doesn't care too much because Tequila has just asked him out for coffee. Frey follows absently (warily) and watches Tequila's spine. You can always tell what people are going to do if you watch their spine, the tilt of their shoulder blades.

The café is too small and warm, but there aren't too many people so it's not bad. Tequila orders them coffees with cream and sugar even though Frey takes his black and slices of black forest cake.

Tequila smiles at him across the table, all teeth and lips and no way out.

"You going to kill me now?" asks Frey, popping the maraschino cherry on top into his mouth.

"Now?" asks Tequila, politely curious.

"That you have your money," clarifies Frey, waving his fork in the air and bravely stealing Tequila's cherry, too.

"I wasn't planning on it," replies Tequila, stroking his chin in a very contemplative manner. "I don't really want to, actually. You've been a nice, big help." And Tequila leans in real close, just like Vanilla did, and (for just a second Frey thinks Tequila might kiss him—) says in the most dangerous voice Frey has ever heard: "But if you ever take that long to get something for me again, I'll break every bone in your body, okay? See you around."

Then he gets up a leaves.

Frey sits there by himself with two cups of coffee and two slices of cake for a very long time.

**the hanged man.**

Momo is a different sort of scary from Vanilla.

He's scary in that punk, what-you-looking-at-asshole sort of way and Frey is used to dealing with people like him. Besides, Frey is older than this teeny-bopper, who ain't seen nothing but the print of his mother's dress.

"How old are you again?" asks Frey, measuring the waist of one of his girls and cruelly declaring that she needs to drop a pound or two before she can go back to work.

"Legal," spits Momo. That catches Frey off guard. Momo looks young, even younger than Tequila, who isn't really that, _that _young, but is definitely _not _legal. "Not that you care. Not that I care that you care, which you don't. Tiki wanted to give you this."

Momo presses a slip of paper into Frey's palm, turns on his heel and stomps away in a flare of wind-messed hair and razor blade cheekbones. It's a business card.

**The Happy Brigade Café  
>1303 Blackbone Street<strong>_**  
>Contact:<strong>_**  
>123-456-7890<strong>

Frey feels a little ill.

**the crown.**

Carmelo Filastrocca is one of Frey's many associates. He delivers Frey the best girls, all from the Middle East or the far North or down South. They're all long-limbed and slender, with full lips and round breasts and straight teeth. They're all broken on a fundamental level, so Frey never has to feel bad about selling them as though they were objects.

Besides, it all comes down to the money. As long as he can break even, he's okay, because buying from the Filastroccas isn't cheap and Frey likes to stay on Carmelo's good side.

"I met your daughter," says Frey passively, because Carmelo is sure to find out eventually and it's best he hears it from Frey. "Don't look at me like that. She was the one threatening me."

Carmelo doesn't change his stance and his face is set in stone, but there is something like pride in his eyes, a very classical that's-my-girl look that Frey thought only existed in movies. Carmelo says, "She's with that Tequila boy."

Frey never took Carmelo as the protective father type but he supposes when the only family you have left is one little girl, it's hard not to be.

"That's right," agrees Frey, examining the polaroids of the next batch of girls that Carmelo wants to sell him. "This one's nice. This one too. Not this one. She's gorgeous. Ew, did this one get her face stuck in a blender or something? Do you know someone called Momo? He's with them, too."

Carmelo grimaces ever so slightly, smoothing a non-existent wrinkle out of his immaculate suit. "I have met Momo, once."

"I hate him," announces Frey.

"Me too," says Carmelo without any expression whatsoever.

**the judgment.**

There is something very strange about knowing Tequila that gives Frey the impossible feeling that he cannot die.

**the death.**

"You ran out," says Vanilla very tonelessly, examining her nails, which are a cheerful shade of sunshine yellow. She's wearing those same arbok skin flats she was the day Frey first spoke to her and she's just put a bullet through his Achilles.

"Of what?" asks Frey. There is something warm trickling from his ears. He can't keep his balance.

Vanilla shrugs. Momo shrugs. Sitting on the table a meter away, Tequila smiles.

"Time," says Vanilla simply. "Usefullness."

"Not really," sings Tequila, the stretch of a crowbar dangling from his fingers. "Honestly, Frey, you just ran out of everything that made me like you. Not that I ever liked you. Ever. Actually, I kind of hate you. You suck. Momo, Vani, let's get Chinese after this."

"I like Chinese," says Vanilla.

"Me too," agrees Momo thoughtfully. "Make it snappy, then, Vani. I'm dying for some fried dumplings."

Vanilla leans in real close and puts the barrel to Frey's temple. So quiet only Frey can hear, she whispers "You'd even lend Tiki your life, right?"

and that's**  
>the end.<strong>

**notes: written for my bro, Happy's, contest thing.  
>notes' notes: i hate writing her stupid characters because they're hard and i don't know how she does it, but it makes her suck in an awesome sort of way. also, tiki is hot.<br>**


End file.
